There is a housefly

There is a housefly, flying around in the kitchen. There is an irony here. Despite its name and its reputation, the ‘common’ housefly, Musca domestica, has been very uncommon in houses of late. I was saying this, just last night, on the phone to my Dad. He remembered them by the swarm when, as a child, a lifetime ago, he lived in London. Where have they gone?

The ‘lesser’ housefly Fannia canicaris, is still frequent, zigzagging madly underneath the hanging lampshade, but it is not attracted to food and has never been so horribly implicated in disease spread. Why has it survived so well, but the ‘common’ has all but vanished?

We live in a modern urban environment these days, sterilized, hermetically sealed, cut off from wild nature out there. Unless you live on a farm, or in a cottage deep in farming country, you are unlikely to have M. domestica buzzing around the food plates. Refrigerators, Tupperware and cling film can now keep the germ-ridden flies away from our food, but why have they declined so?
Modern sewage disposal appears to have done for the housefly in towns and cities. Horse-drawn transport, with its associated waste product, is no longer the norm here either. Farmyards and manure heaps are now the fly’s only breeding grounds and increasing rural remoteness takes the flies further and further from our metropolitan centres.

Meanwhilethe ‘lesser’ breeds everywhere in the garden soil, quietly scavengingwhatever organic decay it can find. It comes into homes, not attracted by food, but by the promise of an aerial territory under the hanging light. In the wild, Fannia species select a sweeping tree bough as the roof of their territory and patrol left and right to maintain their air space.

The ‘lesser’ remains common in cities. The ‘common’ becomes uncommon enough to be worthy of note, like this blog for example.

The Bugman

CURIOUS? WHY CURIOUS?

When 17th century apothecary and naturalist James Petiver published a picture of what, for 200 years, would be Britain's most enigmatic butterfly, Albin's Hampstead Eye, he reported: "Where it was caught by this curious person". His implication was that Eleazar Albin was not just strange, not just odd, but was fuelled by curiosity.

Ongoing projects:

These are some of the books and other projects going on at the moment......

WASP

Dylan Thomas wondered deeply about the worth of wasps. Although we are not told which authors wrote them, among the 'useful' presents he recieved were 'books that told me everything about the wasp, except why. This is the why.

Beetles — in the Collins New Naturalist series

I like beetles, I like them very much indeed, so I wrote a book about them.

Call of nature: the secret life of dung

A key selling point is the fact that the spine of the book is adorned with an elephant's bottom. Publication: February 2017.

House guests, house pests

A natural history of animals in the home. Click here for details of how to get the now scarce hardback.

The paperbacks were released into the wild in February 2016

How to be a curious entomologist

A series of introductory 'how to' workshops/ seminars. Click here for follow-up information.

Mosquito

Published August 2012. How an irritating but trivial gnat became imbued with dark menace well beyond its diminutive size.